Titanic Anniversary: Ship's Gay Passengers Revealed In New Research

The R.M.S. Titanic continues to remain a heartbreaking emblem of maritime history 100 years after her ill-fated maiden voyage. Now one historian is shedding new light on a considerably less-heralded segment of the tragedy: the ship's gay, or at least presumably gay, passengers.

In an OutHistory.org essay, historian James Gifford offers a scholarly survey on the private life of Archibald Willingham Butt, who served as an influential military aide to U.S. presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft prior to his death on the Titanic. Traveling with Butt was his friend Frank D. Millet, an artist who also went down with the ship (the pair, Gifford notes, was berthed separately on the ship).

"Archie always fascinated me, and not least because most accounts always referred to him as a lifelong bachelor," writes Gifford. He goes on to describe Butt as a fashionable "dandy" who liked fashion, antique shopping and the company of numerous female acquaintances: "A handsome man who stayed in shape, Butt's not marrying was a sticking point for me."

He notes:

"Of course there is no conclusive evidence that Archibald Butt was gay, and I find it highly unlikely, given Archie’s careful self-image control, that he ever committed to paper any overt thoughts of such a nature. He was too canny an individual for that, too conscious of the risk in military and political ranks, where such an idea would have put a quick end to any hopes of advancement.

So I can only suggest that my research results in an “impression” that he was homosexual... Of course men can like antiques, be mother-obsessed, remain an inveterate bachelor, notice the colors of ladies' dresses, live constantly in a home full of men, without being gay. We all know that, yes."

Gifford provides more ample evidence for the case of Butt's friend Millet being gay: "So far as I knew, Millet was the only gay man to die on the Titanic. Millet, though married, lived apart from his wife for a good deal of the time. It was largely his doing that Archie was with him on the ship at all."

Also published on the site are a series of letters written by Millet to writer Charles Warren Stoddard, which indicate that the two had a loving, sexual affair in Venice in 1875, 37 years before the Titanic's maiden voyage in 1912. Those letters were transcribed by OutHistory's Claude M. Gruener, a gay artist and writer in Albany. Reads one:

"My dear old Boy, I miss you more than you do me and gaum [pine] constantly – after dark -- Why should one go and the other stay. It is rough on the one who remains."

Gifford is not the first historian to make such implications about Butt and Millet. As he notes, Max Allan Collins' 1999 fictional novel "The Titanic Murders" also suggested the pair had been romantically involved during the voyage. Author Hugh Brewster also wrote of Butt and Millett in his book "Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World," according to The Advocate.

But as OutHistory founder Jonathan Ned Katz told HuffPost Gay Voices, "Gifford's given us a more careful and documented account. He certainly would've been interested if he'd found evidence that they were lovers."

Katz did acknowledge one major difficulty in drawing too dramatic a conclusion over Gifford's essay: "The categories of homosexual and heterosexual weren't yet 'invented' at this point. They couldn't have thought of themselves in those exact terms." Katz added that while Gifford found no evidence of a truly homosexual relationship between the two, "he did end up thinking that when all of the aspects of [Butt's] personality were put together, it suggested to him that he may have been a repressed homosexual." Take a look at a series of historical photos of the Titanic, along with shots of the wreck site, below:

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Titanic Historical Photos

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In this April 10, 1912 file photo, the liner Titanic leaves Southampton, England on her maiden voyage to New York City.

Five days into her journey, the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank, resulting in the deaths of more than 1,500 people.

The Titanic leaves on her maiden voyage in this 1912 file photo.

In this April 1912 file photo, crowds gather around the bulletin board of the New York American newspaper in New York, where the names of people rescued from the sinking Titanic are displayed.

As a 2-month-old baby, Millvina Dean was wrapped in a sack and lowered into a lifeboat from the deck of the sinking RMS Titanic. Dean died in 2009.

This is an undated photo showing the bow of the Titanic at rest on the bottom of the North Atlantic, about 400 miles southeast of Newfoundland.

This April 2, 2010 image provided by RMS Titanic, Inc., shows the bow of the RMS Titanic on the ocean floor during an expeditions to the site of the tragedy.

"Rust sickles," icicle-like structures of rust show the effect the years, underwater, have had as they obscure two portholes of the R.M.S. Titanic.

This is a view looking down on the deck of the R.M.S. Titanic between the number 2 and number 3 stack where the deck suddenly hinges downward at right towards the tear, at which point the stern separated from the rest of the ship.

Large icicle-like structures hang from the side of the Titanic.

Pipes and the captain's bathtub are shown in this July 2003 photo, of what remains of the captain's cabin on the Titanic more than two miles underwater in the north Atlantic.

Plaques left behind by visiting expeditions, seen in this July 2003 photo, are positioned near the telemotor on the deck of the Titanic more than two miles underwater in the north Atlantic.

The giant propeller of the sunken Titanic lies on the floor of the North Atlantic in this undated photo. The propeller and other portions of the famed ship were viewed by the first tourists to visit the wreck site in September 1998.

This September 12, 2008 image provided by RMS Titanic, Inc., shows one of the propellers of the RMS Titanic on the ocean floor during an expedition to the site of the tragedy.

This September 1, 2009 image provided by RMS Titanic, Inc., shows a ships telegraph from the Titanic on the ocean floor during an expeditions to the site of the tragedy.

These lifeboat cranes were used to hoist the ship's wooden lifeboats over the side and into the water during Titanic's sinking. Many of the boats launched soon after the sinking were not close to full, as passengers refused to believe the seriousness of the situation.

Debris litters the hull of the Titanic's stern, peeled outward by the force of the great ship's destruction.

Dr. Robert Ballard, best known for his discovery of the Titanic, is speaks at the Mystic Aquarium & Institute for Exploration in Mystic, Conn. in 2004.

A bollard is illuminated by Alvin on the submerged hull of the sunken Titanic in 1986. Alvin is a manned submersible vehicle used during the exploration of the wreckage.

These portholes on a portion of the ship's hull looked into first class cabins on Titanic's C deck are a part of the "Titanic:The Artifact Exhibition" at the Metreon in San Francisco.

A gold plated Waltham American pocket watch, the property of Carl Asplund, is seen in front of a modern water colour painting of the Titanic by CJ Ashford at Henry Aldridge and Son auctioneers in Devizes, Wiltshire, England Thursday, April 3, 2008.

A girl plays next to a monument for the Irish immigrants to the United States, as she and her family waits in Cobh, Ireland, to greet disembarking passengers of the MS Balmoral Titanic memorial cruise ship at its first stop, Monday, April 9, 2012.

A cruise carrying relatives of some of the more than 1,500 people who died aboard the Titanic nearly 100 years ago set sail from England on April 8, 2012 to retrace the ship's voyage, including a visit to the location where it sank.